The financial health of your firm, its leadership and management, the quality of your relationships with your clients and staff and even the way a firm compensates its partners are as critical to avoiding malpractice as are procedures and systems. That is the premise of my most recent article, Risk Management: Is the Culture of Your Firm Inviting Malpractice or Ethics Violations? which appeared in the July, 2005 issue of the Tennessee Bar Journal. The five risky "cultural" factors that I find most frequenty when conducting a practice review are 1) short-term view; 2)they say they're partners, but they're really solos practicing in the same office; 3) personal fiscal irresponsibility; 4) an "eat-what-you-kill" philosophy; and 5) an absence of trust among the lawyers and staff. There are no questions on the malpractice application that address these issues; but they are in many ways more risky than a lack of systems. Take a moment to read the article and think about whether you have created a culture that exposes your firm.
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